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offer themselves more frongly to our netice in confidering a future portion of thale prophecies. At the present our enquiries are actrained to those iniferies which the Saracens particularly inflicted during five prheic months or 150 years: For fuch is the pace in which it is faid they fhould torment thofe against whom they were fent. And I have anticipated much of what might

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This mode of expreffing years by daies in the case of infliction of the divine judgements, may be feen with an authoritative explanation in Num: 14, 34-Where there is denounced on the children of Ifracl forty years fuffering for their refufing to go up, and take poffeffion of the promised land; according to the number of daies in which they were fearching the land. "Forty daies, (fays the text) ❝ each day for a year, fhall ye bear your iniquities, even forty years." The fame type is ufed alfo in 4th Ezek. v. 6.-" Thou shall bear (faid the "Lord to the prophet) the iniquity of the House of Judah forty daies: I have appointed thee " each

be stated even of thofe afflictions; fince if the reader reflects on the teftimonies of the ferocity, and rapid ravages of the Saracens before produced, he will be amply convinced, that miserable indeed muft have been the ftate of the inhabi. tants not only of the countries which they had over run, but of thofe into which they were likely to advance. so that, to pursue the metaphor of the text, while they continued yet on the wing, what multitudes must have been in perpetual and moft diftressful anxiety,

each day for a year." I mention these paffages. to prevent the reader, who may not have met with a statement of the authority on which this application of daies is adopted by the writers of the Apocalypfe, from imagining that fuch interpretation is arbitrary, and I take this opportunity of obferving once for all, that the reftrictions of time and images contained in this book are peculiarly calculated. to prevent or detect any fallies of imagination in interpreters.

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from fear that a flight of barbarians (a phrase for which I am indebted to Mr. Gibbon) fhould reach their refidence, defpoil them of their property, and force their wives and daughters from them into fervitude the most abominable! And while they were thus employed could those who fuffered under them at all enjoy their lives; or rather, must not myriads have earneftly wished for death to deliver them from their oppreffors? But by the fettlement of establifhed monarchies in the feveral countries of Perfia, Africa, and Spain, their rapid and perpetual motions were stopped; when they mingled with the Natives of the conquered countries, and not only thefe fears abated, but the race itself, which caufed them was in fome measure altered: For that before this period they had ceased to receive from the land from whence they originally came, Mr. Gibbon tef

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tifies at the close of the following appofite paffage, "her fovereignty (fpeaking "of Arabia) was loft by the extent and rapidity of her conquefts, the colo"nies of the nation were scattered over "the Eaft and Weft, and their blood "was mingled with the blood of their converts and captives. After the

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reign of three Caliphs, the throne

was tranfported from Medina to the "Valley of Damafcus, and the banks "of the Tigris; the holy cities were "violated by impious war; Arabia was

ruled by the rod, of a fubject, perhaps. "of a franger; and the Bedoweens of "the Defert, awakening from their "dream of dominion, refumed their "old and folitary independence." (Ch. 50.) The first fixed eftablishment of the Caliphs was made at Bagdad: "In this

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city of peace, fays the hiflorian, arnidst

"the riches of the Eaft, the Abaffides "difdained the abftinence and fru

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gality of the first Caliphs; and aspired "to emulate the magnificence of the "Perfian Kings." Through this alteration of manners, together with the threefold division of the Caliphate were the torments fuffered from these emblamatic locufts abated, and having once fulfilled their miffion, they became more like other nations.

Of the name faid to belong to their King, I have both spoken before, when confidering the parallel paffage of Daniel, and expreffed my conviction, that a reference is here intended to the prediction of that prophet.

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If in rendering the next fentence one woe is past," our tranflators had added the word "by" they would more accurately have expreffed the original term, and by the phrase, one woe is "paffed by," given us what feems to

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