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BEAST was taken, and with him the FALSE PROPHET that wrought miracles before him, with which he deceived them that had received the mark of the beast, and them that worshipped his image. These both were cast alive into a lake of fire burning with brimstone." By an event of the battle little expected, and which will give the name of the VALLEY OF DECISION to the place where it will be fought, a prodigious destruction of the armies of the aliens and apostates takes place, and the principals are taken alive, and doomed to receive a punishment suitable to their wickedness and cruelty.

It is, however, most probable that, as the decision of this mighty struggle has been effected, by some visible and fearful display of the indignation of God upon these abandoned reprobates, so will the doom assigned to them in this prophecy also be; that they "shall be cast alive into a lake of fire burning with brimstone." The BEAST and FALSE PROPHET are figurative characters, though pretty well understood, but the particular mode of

their capture and final punishment (also figu→ ratively expressed) is not likely to be certainly known, till time and events have unfolded the veil of prophecy, and given a clear view of the realities to which these figures correspond. To hazard a conjecture, I think there is in this passage a remarkable correspondence with Isaiah's prophecy of the destiny of EDOM.*" And the streams thereof shall be turned into pitch, and the dust thereof into brimstone, and the land thereof shall become burning pitch. It shall not be quenched night nor day, the smoke thereof shall go up for ever." This is the very description given by St John of the perpetual state of mystic Babylon, after this fatal catastrophe,† and by. Isaiah, in his prophecy of ТOPHET ordained of old for this occasion, to be a suitable prison for the mystic king; having been prepared of God when he made the world, and excavated deep and large; the fuel sufficient to supply the everlasting volumes of smoke and fire, and waiting only for the breath, or word of

Isaiah xxxiv. 9.

Rev. xix, 3.

the Lord, like a stream of brimstone, to explode the shell of rock that covers it, and lay open a LAKE OF FIRE to the astonished eye of the beholder.*

I conceive then, that while the conduct of the distant war, perhaps in the Holy Land itself, is intrusted by the IMPERIAL DRAGON to his generals, as being easy to be decided in one battle, by immense superiority of numbers and instruments of destruction, against powers insignificant and ill prepared for such an encounter; the two principals remain in the ancient capital of the world, in deep consultation for further mischief, and to concert together the spiritual and military operations of the war against the rising church of Christ. And thus taken in their own trap, as the rebellious jews were in Jerusalem, one fatal day terminates their reign and lives together, by the entire destruction of their armies in the field of battle, through the visible power of

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God, and by precipitating them both, with their principal partisans in attendance at that time, alive into the fiery gulph of an immense crater, which suddenly opens underneath this second Sodom.*

*This conjecture gives some (I will not say the best) aecount of the DRAGON and FALSE PROPHET being taken in their own net, and in what manner they will go back—and fall—and be broken-and snared—and taken, which is intimated in several prophecies; and by what means they can be cast alive into a LARE of FIRE burning with brimstone, and how a lake of that unusual kind can be provided. It also accounts for the burning of Babylon by no ordinary event of a military capture, but by the strong hand of the Lord God which judgeth her; (Rev. xviii. 8,) and for the rising up of her smoke for ever and ever; and for this being done in the presence of the holy angels and of the *Lamb, (Rev. xiv. 10,) or in public sight of the true church of Christ; and for their being called to be spectators of a calamity of such unparalelled horror. (Isa. lxvi. 24.)

This conjecture also seems to account for many things spoken in the ancient prophets of ancient Babylon, and applied by St John to the mystic Babylon, or Rome." Therefore shall her plagues come in one day, death, and mourning, and fa mine;" (Rev. xviii. 8,) and that "in one hour shall her judg ment come;" (xviii. 10,) and for the singular mode of her submersion and disappearing out of sight,-" A mighty angel took up a stone like a great millstone, and cast it into the sea, saying, thus-WITH VIOLENCE shall that great city BABYLON be thrown down, and shall be found no more at all."

To this unsuccessful and final attempt of the apostate powers against the pure church of Christ, and particularly to the horrible event of it to the wicked agents engaged in it, the prophetic psalmist alludes in several places ;-in the ninth psalm very particularly. "The Lord is known by the judgment which be executeth: the WICKED is enared in the work of his own hands, The WICKED shall be turned into HELL, and all the nations that FORGET GOD," or apostatise from him to idolatry. In psalm cxi. 8, he alludes to his evil machinations against religion, and the divine retribution of them." Let not his mischievous imagination prosper, lest they be too proud. Let hot burning coals fall upon them:"-(alluding to the vials of wrath:)" let them be cast into the fire, and into the pir, that they never rise up again." See Sect. x. p. 269, and Sect. xv. p. 391, &c,

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