contribute to the embellishment of the Garden of the Lord. FOR the unexpected length of these historical Sketches of the Corruption of Christianity, and the Rise and Progress of the Reformation, I shall make no apology; for the Events of Christian History, since the days of the Apostles, are too little known in America; and they can hardly fail to excite the curiosity, if not the sensibility, of every Professor of the Christian Faith. I have drawn the earlier Facts from Mosheim's Ecclesiastical History; and the latter from Neale's History of the Puritans. But it was not to be expected that that a Youthful Layman should take up the spectacles of a Lutheran Professor, or a Puritan Divine; and it will be easily perceived that I have contemplated them through a different medium, and placed them in another point of light. I have compared my leading authorities with the histories of the Reforma. tion, the writings of the Fathers, and the inspired productions of the Prophets and Evangelists; and I can scarcely refrain from closing the eventful Narrative with the singular coincidences of prophetic anticipation with historical fact. ["In the days of which Kings," said Daniel, interpreting the dream that troubled the spirit of the King of Babylon, "shall the God of Heaven set up a king "dom, "dom, that shall never be destroyed." "I saw," said John, " a Woman ar"rayed in purple and scarlet colour, and "decked with pearls and precious stones, "having in her hand a golden cup, and upon her forehead names of blasphe16 my, and sitting upon seven mountains, "in that City which reigneth over the "Kings of the Earth.”] But I forbear the invidious application since the Book of Prophecy has been sealed as with seven seals, from the prying researches of profane Curiosity; and I shall conclude with a remark which must be obvious to every Reader, that the long duration of the Papal Hierarchy, so clearly predicted, and so accurately described, in the Gospels, the Epistles, and the Revelations, is a proof of the Divine authority of the New Testament, no less irrefragable than the existence of the Jews is of that of the Old, "sifted," as the Prophet Amos had foreshewn, 66 among all Nations, as corn is sifted in "a sieve." The chronology of both these miraculous circumstances in the History of Mankind, however they have been enveloped in the mantle of Time, may yet be corroborated at Rome, by existing Monuments of coeval antiquity. The Bas-Reliefs of the Arch of Titus (the Prince that was to destroy the City and the Sanctuary) have preserved the figure of the well known vessels of the Jewish Temple, ever since the destruction of the Holy City; and the rude Mosaics of the Church of Santa Maria Maggiore, de monstrate |