the emperorship, the consulate, and the senate, shone like the sun, the moon, and the stars. The history of their decline and fall is brought down till the two former were 66 EXTINGUISHED," in reference to Rome and Italy, which so long had ranked as the first of cities and of countries; and finally, as the fourth trumpet closes, we see the " EXTINCTION of that illustrious assembly,"* the Roman senate. The city that had ruled the world, as if in mockery of human greatness, was conquered by the eunuch Narses, the successor of Belisarius. He defeated the Goths, (A. D. 552) achieved the conquest of Rome," and the fate of the senate was sealed.

"As soon as Narses had paid his devotion to the author of victory, and the blessed Virgin, his peculiar patroness, he praised, rewarded, and dismissed the Lombards. Neither the fortifications of Hadrian's mole, nor of the port, could long delay the progress of the conqueror; and Justinian once more received the keys of Rome, which, under his reign had been five times taken and recovered. But the deliverance of Rome was the LAST CALAMITY of the Roman people. The barbarian allies of Narses too frequently confounded the privileges of peace and war: the despair of the flying Goths found some consolation in sanguinary revenge: and three hundred youths of the noblest families, who had been sent as hostages beyond the Po, were inhumanly slain by the successor of Totila (king of the Goths). The FATE OF THE SENATE suggests an awful lesson of the vicissitude of human affairs. Of the senators whom Totila had banished from their country, some were rescued by an officer of Belisarius, and transported from Campania to Sicily; _while others were too guilty to confide in the clemency of Justinian, or too poor to provide horses for their escape to the sea-shore. Their brethren languished five years in a state of indigence and exile: the victory of Narses revived their hopes; but their premature return to the metropolis was prevented by the furious Goths; and all the fortresses of Campania were stained with patrician blood. After a period of thirteen centuries the institution of Romulus expired; and if the nobles of Rome still assumed the title of sena

* See the Index to Gibbon's Hist. under the name Senate.

tors, few subsequent traces can be discovered of a public counsel, or constitutional order. Ascend six hundred years, and contemplate the kings of the earth soliciting an audience, as the slaves or freedmen of the Roman senate."*

Ascend thus, and what would be witnessed but a spectacle of pride and false glory, conjoined perhaps with mean servility and baseness. The scene would only exhibit the nobles of Rome as the stern tyrants of the world. But, from the point to which history has brought us down, ascend four hundred and sixty years, or above seventeen centuries from the present time, and look, not to the princely forum of the imperial city where suppliant kings solicited an audience, but to the bleak shores of a small isle of the gean, which profane history has scarce deigned to mention, and contemplate, not the lordly senators of Rome, nor the kings of the earth awaiting their decision, but the venerable and beloved apostle of Jesus writing in a book the things that were to be thereafter,―see how, at a time when Rome was the persecutor of Christians, the destroyer of Jerusalem, and the mistress of the world, he penned its destiny word after word, till, part being destroyed after part, not a rag of the ple, nor a remnant of its power, nor a ray of its glory should be left;-look how the imperial city, that shone like the sun over all the kingdoms of the world, had no power to withstand one word that was written by that exile's hand, but was finally smitten into blackness as he wrote down its doom; and, if from such a sight some instruction may be drawn, might not men learn even from this small part of the testimony of Jesus, to open unto him who himself stands at the door and knocks, who, unlike to proud mortals, says unto none, seek ye my face in vain, who beseeches us by the ministry of his word to be recon

* Gibbon's Hist. pp. 388, 389.

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ciled unto God, and by whose word, when rightly heard, men, though the slaves of sin before, become the freedmen of the Lord, the denizens of the kingdom of heaven, and of that city which hath foundations, whose maker and whose builder is God.

The calamities of imperial Rome, in its downfall, were told to the very last of them, till Rome was without an emperor, a consul, or a senate. "Under the exarchs of Ravenna, Rome was degraded to the second rank."* The third part of the sun was smitten, and the third part of the moon, and the third part of the stars. The race of the Cæsars was not extinct with the emperors of the West. Rome before its fall possessed but a portion of the imperial power. Constantinople divided with it the empire of the world. And neither Goths nor Vandals lorded over that still imperial city, the emperor of which, after the first transference of the seat of empire by Constantine, often held the emperor of Rome as his nominee and vicegerent. And the fate of Constantinople was reserved till other ages, and was announced by other trumpets. Of the sun, the moon, and the stars, as yet but the third part was smitten.

The

The concluding words of the fourth trumpet imply the future restoration of the Western empire. day shone not for a third part of it, and the night likewise. In respect to civil authority, Rome became subject to Ravenna, and Italy was a conquered province of the Eastern empire. But, as more appropriately pertaining to other prophecies, the defence of the worship of images first brought the spiritual and temporal powers of the pope and of the emperor into violent collision; and, by conferring on the pope all authority over the churches, Justinian laid his helping hand to the promotion of the papal suprem

* Gibbon's Hist. ib. p. 400.

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acy, which afterwards assumed the power of creating monarchs. In the year of our Lord 800, the pope conferred on Charlemagne the title of emperor of the Romans. That title was again transferred from the king of France to the emperor of Germany. By the latter it was formally renounced, within the memory of the existing generation. In our own days the iron crown of Italy was on the head of another" emperor." And the sun, as in the sequel we will see, is afterwards spoken of in the Book of Revelation.

The

There was no longer an emperor in Rome to hinder or restrain the ascendency of the pope.-He that previously letted (or hindered) was taken out of the way; and that wicked one, heading and promoting the apostasy, of which the Spirit spoke expressly, was revealed; and men began to be again enslaved to Rome, but in more than mortal bondage. uncontrolled rise of the papacy is marked from this period. But the subject pertains to other prophecies. The downfall of imperial Rome, closing with the ExTINCTION of the empire, the consulate, and the senate, is, we apprehend, the sole and exclusive theme of the first four trumpets. The book in which they are written is that of Revelation: and the symbols are illustrations of the facts. Under the authority of Rome, Jesus was crucified, and the earliest heralds of redemption were persecuted and slain for preaching his gospel to the nations of the earth. The conversion of an emperor was but a little help. And the hypocritical profession of the faith by many, was one of the first results of the conversion of Constantine. The world, when its power of persecution failed, smiled on religion; and religion was corrupted by the world. The pearl of great price was exchanged for tinsel; but the fine gold was tried. The faith of Rome was not that Christianity of the gospel which alone brings salvation. But salvation was preached; faith was professed; yet men

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The

were not led unto repentance, righteousness was not practised, the trumpets sounded, and judgment came upon the chief of the nations. Rome was weighed in the balance and found wanting. It was no longer the seat of the imperial power. But the city itself did not cease. It exists still; but not for ever. world has yet to see that Rome is not the eternal city. For in the same revelation in which the judgments of heaven first fell upon it, as announced by the four trumpets that were sounded by four angels, its final doom is written, in characters that cannot be mistaken, and by a definition that cannot be misunderstood. But, after the four trumpets, two woes had first to come, seven thunders to utter their voices, and the seven last vials of the wrath of God to be poured upon the earth.

Already we have seen how the trumpets that were sounded by angels, were the judgments of God; the wars and commotions were but the forms in which they came. Of these we have seen how our enemy is the witness; and we have farther to see how his testimony does not close but with the history which he wrote. Speaking of the great assault on the eastern empire by Chosroes, and his consequent discomfiture by Heraclius, (the next point to which we come), “it was the duty of the Byzantine historians," says Gibbon, "to have narrated the causes of his slumber and vigilance." It was the duty of the historian of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, to throw the light of truth upon the words of prophecy, that the symbols, or similitudes, of the things that were to be, may now, after the fulfilment of many of them, be interpreted or compared with the things which have been; and that the mist which had obscured its light for ages, might be seen to disappear from the book of Revelation. But the unconscious execution of the task by Gibbon, renders the elucidation the more sa