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they are inflamed under the mask of loyalty and of attachment to the monarchy. They remonstrate with force and elevation against every measure that tends to the prejudice of the provinces they protect. They can go no farther; but they await the moment to strike the blow that shall lay the fabric of despotism in ruins! When this blow is struck, the effects of it will be equal to those of magic: the cottage will be put on a level with the palace; the peasant with the prince; ranks shall be confounded; titles, distinctions, and birth, shall tumble into an undistinguished heap of confusion; a new moral creation shall strike the view of an admiring universe, and France, like old Rome in her first flights to empire, shall appear with the sceptre of universal dominion bourgeoning in her hands. Out of universal confusion, order shall arise; the great, of nature's creating, will assume their places; and the great, by title and accident, will drop despised into the common mass of the people."

This article, written nearly thirty years before the French revolution, shows it was not difficult to observe the crisis towards which that nation was so rapidly hastening. Frivolity, dissimulation, and blind submission to the female favourites of the court, were the sole guides to promotion and honour; whilst talents and integrity

availed not, but were injurious to their possessors, who were either kept in awe, or the open display of their feelings checked, by towers, messengers, and informers; and this, though it served for a time to smother the spark of patriotism, caused it eventually to burst forth with the most overwhelming violence, having, in its own defence, been obliged to add to its bulk, those inflammable and destructive materials—an oppressed and infuriated mob.

Prediction of St. Cesaire, Bishop of Arles in 542. Taken from a book entitled Liber Mirabilis, which has been verified at the King's Library at Paris, where is an unique original.

THE administrators of France shall, at a future and distant period, be so blinded, that they shall leave it without defenders; the hand of God shall extend itself over them, and likewise over all the rich; all the nobles shall be deprived of their estates and dignities; a division shall spring up in the church of God, and there shall be two husbands, the one true, and the other adulterous: the former shall be put to flight. There shall be a great carnage, and as great an effusion of blood as in the times of the Gentiles. The uni

versal church and the whole world shall deplore the ruin of a most celebrated city, the capital and the inistress of France. The altars of the temple shall be destroyed: the holy virgins razed out, shall fly from their convents, and the church shall be stripped of her temporal goods; but at length the Black Eagle and the Lion shall ap pear arriving from other countries-then misery be to thee, oppressed city of opulence! thou shalt at first rejoice, but thy end shall come. Misery be to thee, O city of philosophy! thou shalt be subjected. A captive king, humbled even to the dust, shall at last recover his crown, and shall destroy the children of impiety.

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Both this and the first article afford ample scope for reflection, not only to the prince and the statesman, but to every individual of a state. It appears that the multitude of their military are not to be considered as the defenders of princes, when called into action against the opinion of their subjects; or France, at the period of the revolution, had ample ground to hug itself in its security. The folly, the idle bickerings, and exposure by their princes and nobles of each other's failings and vices, had alienated the affections of the people, and, according to this prediction, by their own blindness left them without defenders. The vassal who looked not on the noble as his natural protector and guardian, but

as an oppressor, rose against him; the soldier against the officer; the officer against the general, and the servant against the master. Chaos was again restored, the holy altars were overturned, the convents defiled and pillaged, nobles reduced to the rank of private citizens, to save even life itself, and the humblest of citizens and of menials rose to power and despotism; so dreadfully was this prophecy fulfilled. At length, even the Black Eagle, the ensign of the northern powers, and the Lion, that of Britain, gained possession of Paris, the self-dignified city of philosophy, stripped her of her ill-gotten spoil, and, as a punishment of her abuse of power over other states, raised again to reign over her a king that may have been truly said to have been humbled even to the dust.

Extracts from the celebrated prophetical Discourse on the Rise and Fall of Papacy. By Robert Fleming. A. D. 1701.

Revelations, Chap. 16.

1st, THAT the Revelation * contains the series of all the remarkable events and changes of the state of the Christian church to the end of the

See Rev. iv. 1, &c. x. 5, 6, 7.

world. 2d, That Mystical Babylon*, or the great Whore, described there, doth signify Rome in an Antichristian Church state. 3d, That, therefore, this cannot be Rome pagan properly, but Rome papal.

The verity of our holy religion is proved from two things principally, viz. miracles and prophecy and both these arguments have been excellently improved by learned men. But yet, as the first of these was perhaps the principal and most convincing topic to those that lived in our Saviour's days; so I look upon the second to be the most considerable to those who live in after ages.

It has been a very ancient opinion, that the world would last only six thousand years; that, according to the old traditional prophecy of the house of Elias, the world should stand as many millenaries as it was made in days; and that therefore, as there were two thousand years from the creation to Abraham, without a written directory of religion, and two thousand from thence to Christ, under the old economy of the law, so there would be two thousand years more under the Messiah. So that after the militant state of the christian church is run out, in the year 2000, it is to enter upon that glorious sabbatical millenary, when saints shall reign on the earth, in a peaceable manner, for a thousand years more.

*See Rev. xvii. 1. 5. 18.

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