are called the thirty tyrants, all contributed to the general devastation, that at the close of Mr. Gibbon's tenth chapter we meet with this remark; " Applying "this authentick fact to the most correct "tables of mortality, it evidently proves, "that above half the people of Alexan"dria had perished; and could we ven

ture to extend the analogy to the "other provinces, we might fufpect, that war, peftilence, and famine, had confumed in a few years, the moiety "of the human'fpecies." Behold, Death, and Hell following him! and mark this fatal teftimony of a writer, who in many paffages betrays a bitter enmity to the name of Chrift, to the truth of this - prophecy !*" He neglects not however

to

The Teftimony of this writer to the reveale account of this period, is fo very remarkable, tha

I think

to record those periods of perfecution to which the next feal fo plainly alludes, (See the fixteenth chapter of Gibbon's history)" And, faith St. John when he " had

C

I think thofe readers who either have not already read, or have not observed it, will be far from thinking the following extract improperly intro duced," But a long and general famine was a "calamity of a more ferious kind. It was the inevitable confequence of rapine and oppreffion, "which extirpated the produce of the present and.. "the hope of future harvefts. Famine is almost al་ ways followed by epidemical diseases, the ef"fect of fcanty and unwholesome food. Other "causes must however have contributed to the furi"ous plague, which from the year 250 to the year "265, raged without interruption in every pro"vince, every city, and almost every family of "the Roman empire. During fome time five "thousand perfons died daily in Rome; and many "towns that had escaped the hands of the barba "rians, were entirely depopulated." Gibb. ch

10.

"had opened the fifth feal, I faw under "the altar the fouls of them that were (or rather had been)," flain for the

word of God, and for the teftimony

which they held; and they cried with a loud voice, faying, How long O "Lord, Holy and True, doft thou not

judge and avenge our blood on them "that dwell on the earth? and white

46

66

robes were given unto every one of

2

them; and it was faid unto them, that

they should reft yet for a little feafon, Juntil their fellow fervants alfo and their "brethren, that fhould be killed as they

were, fhould be fulfilled." Here is ftrongly expreffed an interval between pa perfecution, pointed at by, "them "who had been flain," and future juft impending, clearly fignified by mention. of thofe, who "in a little feason, should› "be killed as they were." And fuch was the feafon which fucceeded the

dread.

dreadful diftractions abovementioned; from the death of Valerian, under whom the eighth perfecution took place, to the two laft and moft dreadful of all, under the reign of Diocletian and his affociates in the empire. After which that great change took place through which according to the predictions of Daniel, the fervants of God" were "holpen with a little help" and which was thus prefignified to St. John-"And "I beheld, when he had opened the

fixth feal, and lo, there was a great * earthquake, and the fun became "black as fackcloth of hair, and the " moon became as blood; and the ftars "of heaven fell unto the earth, even as

a fig-trée cafteth her untimely figs, when the is thaken of a mighty wind; and the heavens departed as a feroll, a when it is rolled together; and every * mountain and island were moved out "of

C 2

of their places. And the kings of the

earth, and the great men, and the "rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bond

man, and every free man hid themfelves in the dens and in the rocks of "the mountains; and faid to the moun

tains and rocks, Fall on us and hide "us from the face of him that fitteth "on the throne, and from the wrath of "the lamb: For the great day of his

wrath is come; and who fhall be able "to ftand?" Here is moft manifeftly be tokened in the strongest symbols a great change in the governing powers of the world, and from a comparifon with the preceding feal, evidently those powers, by which the fervants of God, and Christ had even till then been perfecuted. And by what could the powers of heathen Rome be more ftrongly charac terized, or the time of their removal

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