holidays may yet be counted in any almanack. Doing according to his will, promoting image worship, persecuting the true worshippers of God, causing saints of his own creation to be honoured, and their altars to be enriched, dividing the land for gain, assuming, in virtue of his spiritual authority, a temporal power, forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats, enjoining penances without number, exercising an inquisitorial jurisdiction over the judgment and the consciences of men, and, by all deceivableness of unrighteousness, magnifying himself above all, the pope laid his yoke upon the clergy and the laity, upon kings and kingdoms; and, while light was turned into darkness, piety became a task, and degenerated into a formal and eternal round of unmeaning frivolities. The screw and rack in the dungeon, the pile and the faggot on the heath or in the street, the secret confession and the open recantation, the numbering of beads to count devotion, the self-inflicted lashing to expiate sin, the solemn procession or the solitary pilgrimage, the frequent fasting and the purchased absolution, holy days instead of holy men, bodily labour identified with godliness, all betoken and bespeak the papal yoke. The church, as destitute of true light, was black; and he who ruled over it also held it in bondage. The authority of the pope, or of the church of which he was the head, was supreme over the subjugated mind.

No description is given of the symbol denoting the third form of religion, which was black, as of that which was white, and another which was red. Nothing is here told literally concerning it; nothing farther was seen but the horse and the rider, its colour and his yoke; but there was heard a voice in the midst of the four living creatures, and, unlike to the former, by a difference prominently marked, the symbolical description is continued.

And I heard a voice in the midst of the four living creatures say, a measure of wheat for a penny, and three measures of barley for a penny; and see thou hurt not the oil and the wine. A measure, or choenix, was equal to about a wine quart, and a penny, or denarius, a silver coin, about sevenpence in value, -the usual price of a day's labour, when money was of more value, and grain cheaper than with us. Neither wheat nor barley, except they be exceedingly scarce, are ever wont to be measured and sold in quarts. And nothing can more clearly imply a time of scarcity and famine, than the measuring out of grain in so small quantities at so great a price. But as pertaining to religion, as forming part of a symbolical description, and not as seen on earth, but spoken by a voice from heaven, the words have not to be interpreted literally, but, it is presumed, must have a spiritual significancy. And, comparing things spiritual with spiritual, and looking to scripture alone for the interpretation of the symbol, the seeming obscurity may pass away with a word from that region of light. "Behold the days come, saith the Lord God," by the mouth of another prophet, "that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord." Amos viii. 11.

There

Another characteristic of popery thus unambiguously appears. Christ was the bread of life, that came down from heaven, and when his word was withheld from men, it was such a famine, in a religious view, that was prevalent upon the earth. was a famine of the hearing of the word of God-and the seclusion of it from the people was a practised portion of the popish system. The Bible itself was a shut or sealed book; and the word of God was long heard only in another tongue. A famine of that word, on which alone the soul can be fed and

live, accompanied the spiritual darkness, of which it was the cause, and the assumption and exercise of spiritual authority. That word, which is the granary of religious truth, was sealed up by the very hands that ought to have dispersed it, like seed and nourishment throughout the world. And instead of that food for the souls of men being plentifully supplied, that they might eat abundantly and live, it was doled out in the smallest portions, the Bible was a book prohibited to common use, the divine word was held unsafe without a human interpreter, short selections only were inserted in the missals; and the scarcity, and dearth, and famine of the word of God, was such, as fully to explain the import of the figure, when rightly understood and interpreted, as descriptive of religion, in a spiritual sense,—a measure of wheat for and three measures of barley for a penny.

a penny,

But still, even in the view of heaven, there was something precious on earth, and a charge was given respecting it. When David had prepared a place for the ark, and when they set it in the midst of the tent that he had pitched for it, in the psalm which he delivered into the hands of Asaph and his brethren, he thus calls on the house of Israel, "Be mindful always of the covenant of the Lord which he had commanded to a thousand generations, even the covenant which he made with Abraham, and his oath unto Isaac; and hath confirmed the same to Jacob for a law, and to Israel for an everlasting covenant, unto thee will I give the land of Canaan, the your inheritance; when ye were but few, even a few, and strangers in it. And when they went from nation to nation, from one kingdom to another people, he suffered no man to do them wrong; yea, he reproved kings for their sakes, Touch not mine anointed, and do my prophets no harm. Sing unto the Lord all the earth; show forth from day to day

saying,

lot of

his salvation. Declare his glory among the heathen ; his marvellous works among all nations," &c. David, in the Psalms, and all the prophets, testified of Christ. And the charge and reproof given even to kings, concerning his anointed and his prophets, coupled with the mention of the covenant with Abraham, which God had commanded for a thousand generations, of the everlasting covenant, seems at least to have a higher reference and significancy than pertains to the merely temporal blessings of the house of Israel, and may serve to interpret the meaning of the words, See thou hurt not the oil and the wine. Touch not mine anointed, and do my prophets no harm. Of the two witnesses that shall prophecy a thousand two hundred and threescore days, clothed in sackcloth, it is said, If any man will hurt them, fire proceedeth out of their mouth, and devoureth their enemies; and if any man will hurt them, he must, in like manner, be killed, Rev. xi. 5. The charge not to harm or to hurt, and the threatening of death to those who should kill them, correspond with that in the verse before us. The appointed time during which they who knew their God, were to be tried that they might be purified and made white, corresponds with the prophecying in sackcloth of the anointed ones and the witnesses of the Lord. But, whatever mortal suffering they might endure, that which was precious in the sight of heaven, the oil and the wine, were not to be hurt. They may slay me, said Paul, but they cannot hurt me. In a natural sense, they might be slain; in a spiritual sense, they were not to be hurt. Their persecutions, trials, and afflictions, could only tend to perfect their faith. As from the treading of the wine-press the wine is not hurt, but flows more freely, though the lees be wrung out, and comes more pure from the hands of the refiner; or as the oil, instead of being destroyed, exudes before the

heat of the sun or of a fire, or yields to the strong compression of the substance which contains it, so persecution would but purify the people of the Lord, who keep the testimony of Jesus, whatever they may suffer. As his, and in that character as descriptive of their spiritual state, they are not to be hurt. Though injured, in a human sense, their blood would be avenged. And they are precious in the sight of the Lord, as are the oil and the wine among the children And of them he says, touch not mine anointed ones, and do my prophets,-my witnesses who prophecy,-no harm. See thou touch not the oil and the wine.

of men.

At the opening of each of the first four seals, one of the four living creatures, one by one successively, said unto John, come and see. They were in the midst of the throne, and round about the throne; and they rested not, day nor night, from giving glory unto God. Religion was their office and their charge. And each, in his order, manifested a new form of it on the earth. But after the third said unto John, Come and see, and when he had looked and seen the black horse and him that sat on it, with a yoke in his hand, the prophet saw no more, nor was aught farther shown him by the spiritual being, but he heard a voice in the midst of the four living creatures. While popery reigned, the whole world was affected by its darkness; it kept the word of God from the nations; it strove to hinder every man from reading or hearing in his own tongue the wonderful works of God, and tried thus to reverse and abrogate the blessed efficacy of the first miraculous effusion of the Holy Spirit. It was connected too with every other form of religion, as the voice came from the midst of the four spirits, that call on the prophet to see each in its own form. It was the corruption of Christianity; not another religion; but the apostacy from