they pleased, and live upon the charity of the public. They assumed marks of gravity and holiness which no other order had ever shown. Their popularity was unrivalled. Large cities were cantoned out for their accommodation. The treasures of the world were laid at their feet. From no other hands would the people receive the sacraments; and with them they were zealous to deposit their dead. Vast multitudes thought it their highest happiness to be admitted into the mendicant orders. Many made it an article in their last wills that their bo dies should be wrapped in old Dominican or Franciscan rags, and be interred among the Mendicants. For three centuries, these two orders governed Europe. They filled every important post in church and state; taught in all the universities and schools; and though they quarrelled most violently with each other, they were the very soul of the Papal power, and through that, gave law to empires, states and nations. But their monkish cowl concealed the most scandalous immoralities and vices.

The Dominicans first came into England, A. D. 1221. The mayor of London permitted them to erect a convent by the Thames, on a street which is still called Black Friars, from the color of their dress. The Franciscans came into England soon after. Their establishment was at Canterbury.

To give a full account of all the operations, corruptions, superstitions, frauds and enormities of the monks; their bitter animosities and contentions, would require volumes. Their history sickens the heart. To see men, under pretence of great devotedness to God, leading the most loathsome, filthy life; sometimes casting off all clothing and going on all fours like beasts; secreting themselves in dens and holes; or wandering about in the extremes of wretchedness, with their hair and beard of an enormous length, and their bodies covered with vermin; eating of choice, the most nauseous food; wearing heavy chains; fastening graters upon their breast and back; girding themselves with bandages of bristles and sharp pointed wires; flogging themselves with thorn-sticks; mutilating their bodies, until they often expired under their self-tortures; and these men commanding the reverence and homage of the world as saints, holy ones-what can be more revolting and distressing to a rational mind? And is this indeed Christianity? Is this the Church which Christ redeemed to himself and renewed by his Spirit, that he might present it a glorious Church, not having spot or wrinkle, or any such thing? Oh, no. We have turned away from her to contemplate this abominable excrescence which grew upon her side, and which weighed her down even to the dust. But we shall see worsethings than these.

MAHOMETANISM.

IN the Revelations of John, the degenerate Church was taught to expect the most desolating judgments from terrific adversaries. Already we have seen Pagan Rome going forth, and hell following, with power to kill with sword and with hunger, and with death and with the beasts of the earth. Ten fiery persecutions have blazed around the Church. Her martyrs are before the throne of God. These woes are past. But under the figure of a star fallen from heaven to earth, to whom was given the key of the bottomless pit, and who should open that pit and let forth out of the smoke of the pit swarms of locusts, to whom was given power as the scorpions of the earth, was depicted another adversary, who should now arise and in whose days men would seek death and not find it, and desire to die, and death would flee from them.

Arabia had known but little of the power of the Gospel. Her people were ingenious and powerful but groped in darkness. Here appeared the fallen star. Here Mahomet, the

wicked impostor, opened the bottomless pit, i. e. set up a false religion which should darken the nations and send forth a host of scorpions which should desolate some of the fairest portions of Christendom.

Mahomet was originally a tradesman. About the year 608, he formed the bold scheme of setting up a new religion in the earth, and becoming the head of empires. He retired to a cave in Mecca, where as he pretended, with the assistance of an angel, but really of a Jew and a renegado Christian, he wrote the Koran, the only sacred book of the Mahometans.

He declared that there was one God, and that Mahomet was his prophet. To captivate Jews and Christians, he allowed both Moses and Christ to be true prophets; but represented himself as superior, to both in light and power, and sent of God to reform the systems they had established. He compiled his book from oriental tales and fables, from legendary trash of rabbies, and from the Jewish and Christian Scriptures, and made it a strange compound of blasphemy and folly. His ideas of providence were those of the fatalist, He forbade the use of swine's flesh and spiritual liquors, and required occasional fasts; but his morality was of the loosest character, allowing to men the free indulgence of their passions; and he promised to his followers a carnal heaven, where they should spend an eternity in the grossest sensualities.

When he first announced himself as the prophet of God, a

storm arose against him and he fled from Mecca to Medina. This flight occurred A. D. 622, and is called, by the Mahometans, the Hegira; and is regarded as their grand epoch.

An immense multitude soon adhered to the impostor. He waged an exterminating war against all who refused to receive him. His proselytes were made by fire and the sword. No force or power could withstand him, and before his death, which happened A. D. 631, he was complete master of all Arabia.

With him did not end his religion. He had opened the bottomless pit, and forth had issued deadly scorpions. With a zeal equal to their master, his followers every where spread his licentious and bloody system. Syria, Persia, Egypt and other countries fell under their dominion. Their once flourishing churches, now all found a grave. Jerusalem, where David had sung, and Isaiah had prophesied, and our Lord was crucified, and the Spirit had triumphed, fell in 637, before their ravages, and was given up to a long night of dreadful darkness.

In the year 713 the Saracens, as his followers were called, passed from Africa to Spain, reduced to an awful slavery, those Christians who had a name to live, but were dead, put an end to the kingdom of the Goths, which had continued for 300 years, and advanced into France, intending to overrun Europe and blot out the Christian name. But to them was given, only "The third part of men." An opposing power met them in France between Tours and Poictiers, A. D. 734, under Charles Martel, and defeated them with a tremendous slaughter, killing 370,000 in one day.

In a subsequent period, they made themselves masters of the fertile island of Sicily, and spread terror to the very walls of Rome.

In the East, they pushed their conquests to the extremities of India, compelling every people and nation to bow to the crescent. The sufferings of Christians wherever they came, were exceed ingly great. They were beheld by the Saracens with the utmost abhorrence, and treated rather like dogs, than men. Immense numbers were induced to embrace their religion. Those who refused, were either slain or reduced to such extremities, that the light of Christianity, which once shone bright in Africa and Asia, was soon nearly extinguished.

In the beginning of the 13th century, a new and terrible power appeared in Asia, called the Ottomans, from Othman their leader, and now the Turks. They inhabited the northern coast of the Caspian Sea. The Saracens persuaded them to embrace the religion of Mahomet. Oh had some Christian mis

sionaries but spread among them the light of the Gospel-but they were deceived by the terrible impostor. They soon contended with their teachers, overthrew the whole Saracen dominion, and became masters of all that fair portion of Asia and Africa, which Mahomet claimed. Composed of four sultanies, they were the four Angels which were bound in the river Euphrates and let loose to kill and destroy. Bajazet, the third sovereign from Othman, matured a plan for extinguishing the great empire, and with it the religion of Christ. But when he was just ready to fall upon Constantinople, Tamerlane one of the mightiest of monarchs and warriors, who reigned over all the north and east of Asia, fell upon him at the head of a million of men; destroyed his army; took him captive, put him in an iron cage and carried him for a show through all his dominions. But Tamerlane with his vast armies, embraced the religion of the false prophet, and treated the Christians in the East with the greatest severities.

The Turks were checked, but not destroyed. They gradually became formidable to the Christians, and about a century after this defeat A. D. 1453, Mahomet the Great took Constantinople and with it all Greece, where Christianity had for a long period reigned so triumphant.

Such is a brief history of that terrific dominion which was let loose in the seventh century, from the bottomless pit. It was early rent by violent factions, and there are now two principal sects of Mahometans, who differ concerning the right of succession to Mahomet; the Sheichs or Shiites who are chiefly Persians, and the Sonnites, inhabiting East Persia, Arabia, Turkey, and Independent Tartary. There are about fifteen millions of Mahometans in Hindostan. A new and powerful sect has recently sprung up in Arabia, called Wahabees, who profess to be reformers. But all the different sects and factions have ever united in opposition to Christianity, and given a blow in the Eastern world and in beautiful Greece from which it has never yet recovered. It now extends over Turkey, Tartary, Arabia, Africa, Persia and the dominions of the Grand Mogul, embracing about 100 millions of devoted subjects. It is an awful mystery in the providence of God. why is it permitted? When will all these vast nations bow at the feet of Jesus? The “He that will come,

time is assuredly and rapidly approaching. shall come, and will not tarry,' Mahomet shall be destroyed, and Asia, Africa, and Greece be free.

CHAPTER VIII.

Prophecies relating to the Papacy. Its gradual rise.

Grant

Tradi

of Phocas. Causes of the vast increase of Papal dominion. Ignorance, Superstition and Corruption of the age. tion substituted for the Bible. Subjection of Heathen Nations. Subserviency of the monks Papal Rome Idolatrous, and a Temporal Power, the Little Horn. Supposed time of her Continuance. Election of Popes. Efforts at Supreme Dominion. Hildebrand's treatment of Henry. Thomas a Becket. Interdiction. The Power given to the Beast.

ABOUT the same time that Mahometanism appeared in the east, the Papal power arose in the west; a power, which, while it pretended to support Christianity, was scarcely less destructive to vital godliness.

This power, also, was described with wonderful accuracy, ages before, by the spirit of prophecy. It is the little Horn spoken of by Daniel, which should arise after the ten horns and speak great words against the Most High, wear out the saints of the Most High, and think to change times and laws. It is the Man of sin, who, Paul told the Thessalonians should be revealed; the Son of perdition, who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped, so that he as God, sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God. It is the Antichrist, described by John; the terrible Beast in the Revelation, which opened his mouth in blasphemy against God, and to whom it was given to make war with the saints, and to overcome them, and to have power over all kindreds and tongues and nations.-the Woman arrayed in purple and scarlet colour, upon whose forehead was a name written-MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE

HARLOTS, AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH."

MOTHER OF

The Mahometan power rose suddenly, and, by the sword, spread rapidly over the earth; but the Papal was, for more than five centuries, coming to its full growth. It sprang out of an early violation of that fundamental principle of Christ's kingdom, which ought ever to be sacredly maintained-THE PERFECT PARITY OF THE MINISTERS OF THE GOSPEL.

Of the immediate causes of this violation we have no certain knowledge. Probably a serious regard to the welfare of the Church, induced the early Christians to form an association around every metropolis, and to give a sort of pre-eminence to the minister of Christ who resided there; and that soon, those