Seljukians had possessed in Asia Minor. His son Orchan gained Nice from the Greeks; and at last Mahomet II. one of his successors, got possession of Constantinople, and founded the Empire of Turkey in Europe, Asia, and Africa. Les F. Un. Suite de la Phil. 1299. Thus were the four peoples finally amalgamated into one Empire, and they were fairly represented by Mahomet and his three vizirs on their capture of the Imperial seat of the Greek Cæsars, and key to the whole Prætorian Præfecture of Illyricum. Gibb. xII. lxviii. n. n. 16. Rev. ix. 14.

7. The mighty Angel with a Rainbow on his head. Our Lord's extraordinary manifestation and visitation of his Church by the Reformation, when he republishes his gospel, purified and cleansed from the dross and stubble of popery, condensed into a more portable size by the recent invention of printing, and become more digestible by its emancipation from the burdensome rites and ceremonies of the Roman Church. Rev. x. 1.

8. The Angel with the everlastng Gospel. The wider diffusion of pure Christianity by the doctrines of the Reformation, at which the session of the Ancient of Days or the Father's judgment upon the papacy began. For the Reformers caused the adoration of the Church to revert from the existing pantheon of saints and angels to its original and sole legitimate object, the only true God. Rev. xiv. 6,7.

9. The Angel announcing the fall of Babylon. The rapid decline of the papacy in Germany, England, and Holland, and in other parts of the two Prætorial-Præfectures of the Pope, by the fire and thunder of the Gallic and Italic witnesses.

10. The third Angel. The loud and vehement protestations of the Gallic and Italic witnesses against the interference of the regal decemvirate of the Cæsars in

that spiritual kingdom which God gave to us and not to them, Heb. xii. 28; James ii, 1-9; for " nothing in Him," John xiv. 30; Rev. xiv. 9, 10, 11.

they had

11. The Angel out of the Temple. Luther and the other Reformers, who by their public outcries against the abuses of the Papacy provoke to action the instruments of the Son of man in the subsequent European wars, A. D. 1518-1815. Rev. xiv. 15. This angel passes the sentence according to his authority delegated by Christ, Matth. xvi. 19; xviii. 18; Rev. xi. 6; and the Son of Man is the executioner, Rev. xiv. 16, according to Rom. xii. 19.

12. The Angel with the sharp sickle. The active carnal instruments of God's judgments on the overthrow of Antichristian power. Rev. xiv. 17.

13. The Angel which had power over the fire of the altar. The true witnesses of God, who, before or during the grand catastrophe of the drama of prophecy, by the possession and fearless dissemination of the pure truth provoke to action the carnal instruments of God's judgments. Rev. xiv. 18, compare with viii. 5, xi. 5. See p. xiii.

14. The seven Angels with the seven last plagues. The seven series of Reformers in the Western Church, the real incentives of the woes brought upon the ten kingdoms by their seven thunders of the pure word, and bold assertion of civil and religious liberty to God's heritage.

15. The Angel with great power. Our blessed Lord's manifestation by the Reformation. See 7. Rev. xviii. 1. 16. A mighty Angel with a great stone. The sudden and violent fall of the Roman Churches. Rev. xviii. 21. 17. The Angel in the Sun. A more brilliant display of the true principles of Christ's kingdom, by which they will quickly gain ground among all orders of men. Rev. xix. 18.

18. The Angel with the key of the Bottomless Pit. The last stage of the Christian dispensation when all evil shall be abolished, and Christ having trodden Satan under our feet, appear without sin unto salvation.

ANTICHRIST, is so called from the prophecy of Daniel viii. 25, because he is said there to "stand up against the Prince of princes" being partly the same as the Beast with ten horns, for " these shall make war with the Lamb and the Lamb shall overcome them, for he is Lord of lords and King of kings," Rev. xvii. 14, being partly also the same as the two-horned Beast, the false Prophet i. e. teacher, because "he spoke great words against the Most High," Dan. vii. 25, Antichrist literally meaning one against Christ. Antichrist is known by his Father and Son denying Heresy i.e. by his denying the Father and Son in the relation, which they are represented, as bearing to each other, in the Holy Scriptures. The Roman Emperor Constantine first established this heresy in the Council of Nice, A.D. 325, and the sovereigns, confederate with the Emperor in subjecting the Kingdom of Christ to their rule, have retained it in their state-churches ever since. This heresy consists in teaching, that Christ is the Son of the Father by an eternal generation, which Babylon, knowing to be a moral impossibility, unhesitatingly terms it a Mystery, and thus she becomes MYSTERY, BABYLON the Great. But St. John assures us that "no lie is of the Truth" 1 John ii. 21, i. e. nothing self-evidently false, as such a contradiction as an unoriginated origination must be. He tells us that he wrote his gospel, that we might know, that Jesus, whom he represents as the Word begotten flesh, was the Christ, the Son of God, John xx. 31. For the Docetes and Cerinthians, heretics who lived

in his time, maintained that the pure Word was the Christ, the Son of God, abstracted from and independent of all humanity. He does not write against the Ebionite Socinians; for these, besides acknowledging that Jesus was the Christ, did not exist till after the time of St. John. (Mosh. Eccl. Hist. Cent. 1. Pt. ii. Chap. v. Sect. xvii. Beausobre Introd. N. T. Ebionites.) The Docetes maintained, that the Logos or Word assumed the outward shape and visible appearance of a mortal but they denied that he was clothed with a real body, or that he suffered really, believing that he was altogether an airy immaterial phantom, who instead of issuing from the womb of the Virgin descended on the banks of the Jordan in the form of perfect manhood and seemed to expire on the cross, and after three days to rise from the dead. The Cerinthians maintained, that Christ the Son of God, descended upon Jesus at the latter's baptism, and at his death flew up again into heaven, so that Jesus alone died and rose again. (Mosh. Eccl. Hist. Cent. 1. Pt. ii. Chap. v. Sect. vi. xvi.; Gibb. iii. xxi. n. n. 26; Beausobre. Introd. N. T. Cerinthians.) Now St. John affirms at the close of his gospel that it was written that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. There was yet no doubt in the church, that the Christ, the Son of God, was of a divine nature, but the question was, whether he was pure deity, or of a compound nature, whether Jesus, a man, could be the Christ, the Son of God, which is constantly affirmed he was, in the New Testament. St. John therefore maintains against the Docetes, that the Christ the Son of God, was not pure Deity, whom they pretended their visible phantom to be; because no man hath seen God or pure Deity at any time, nor can see him, John i. 18; vi. 46; 1 John iv.12, neither heard his voice nor seen his shape, John v. 37; but that

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the Christ, the Son of God, was composed of matter as well as Deity, and was audible, visible, and tangible, 1 John, i. 1-3, as even the blood and water, which issued from his side testified, John xix. 34, 35. And if this testimony, which he calls the testimony of men, in his 1 Ep. v. 9. be not satisfactory, he affirms that the testimony of God is greater, who declares by his Spirit which dwells in his children, 1 John ii. 20, 27; iii. 24; iv. 4, 12, 13, that the Christ, the Son of God, did come by water and by blood-that Jesus come in the flesh is Christ -which if any one under such circumstances can deny, he will make God himself out a liar, though every body who believes on the Son of God, has this testimony of the Spirit for it in himself. Against the Cerinthians also the same testimony is directed, who made the Christ, the Son of God, merely a divine nature imparted to Jesus, which entered him at his baptism and departed at his death. But St. John affirms that the Son of God came not with water and blood, but by water and blood; that these were necessary elements of his constitution, and so essential, that it is the blood of Jesus Christ, the Son, which cleanseth us from all sin, 1 John, i, 7, as if it had been God's own proper blood, Acts xx. 28. Now as the man Jesus, and no other was the Son, which the Docetes and Cerinthians denied, the Docetes and Cerinthians denied the Son; and as God was the Father, in respect to the Son, in no other way than in begetting the man Jesus, they denied the Father. To deny Jesus was the Christ, i. e. to deny that Christ came by flesh, (as it

may be translated according to the Hebrew idiom,) is the same as to deny that Jesus was the Son of God. For strictly speaking, the Christ or Anointed and the Son of God denote the same office, according to the marginal reading of the prediction, Ps. ii. 6, 7, and St. John,