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Venit summa dies et ineluctabile tempus.

The fatal day, th' appointed hour is come.

It is however to be observed, that in this terrible calamity and severe judgment of heaven, Almighty God showed a peculiar regard to his own people. For Alaric had ordered that the two Churches of St. Peter and St. Paul, should be places of refuge, and that whoever retired there should be safe. The Christians therefore fled thither, and with them some also of the Pagans, who by that means sustained no hurt.

For three days, the city lay under the tyranny of the Goths; who then leaving it, passed into the provinces of Campania, Lucania, and Calabria, wasting the country, and loading themselves with the spoils of it. But being arrived at Consentia, a town of Calabria, as if the Almighty chose to drop the rod of justice he had made use of; there Alaric sickened and died in a few days. Athaulph, his successor, made peace with the emperor, and obtained for himself and his Goths, a settlement in the southern parts of France.

But the anger of God was not yet assuaged. The Vandals, the Alans, and the Suevi, not content with having ravaged Gaul, had passed the Pyrenean mountains in 409, and entering Spain, another province of the empire, defeated the Roman armies there. The calamities caused by these savage people in that country were most dreadful. Besides the destruction made by the sword, the famine became so excessive, that many did not scruple to eat human flesh, and even mothers murdered their own children to feed upon them. To these miseries was also added the plague, which carried off multitudes; and the wild beasts, accustomed to human flesh from the number of carcasses that had perished by the sword, famine, and plague, assaulted even the living, and devoured them. This account we have from Idatius, a bishop of Spain in that century. The three above-mentioned barbarous nations, after the reduction of the country, in 411, divided its provinces among themselves, and settled there.

Attila, king of the Huns, a Pagan, people of Scythia,

now Tartary, broke into different provinces of the empire with a prodigious army, called himself the "scourge of God," and answered that name by his devastations and barbarities, destroying all before him by fire and sword. He was feared as a more fierce and savage barbarian, than either Alaric or Radagaisus. In the year 451 he invaded Gaul, and was there beat by the Roman army, assisted by the Goths, Alans, Franks, and Burgundions. Upon his defeat he retired into Pannonia, which became the seat of the Huns, part of that country being called from them Hungaria. Attila having reinforced his army, marched into Italy, where he spread destruction. As he advanced in his career, he was met by St. Leo Pope, who addressed him with so much energy, eloquence, and dignity, that the barbarian let himself be persuaded to retire out of Italy.

The Vandals had got footing in Africa from the year 427, and afterwards a fixed settlement there by agreement with the emperor. In 455, Genseric, their king, was invited into Italy by the empress Eudoxia, through a disgust she had taken to Maximus her husband, who forced her to marry him. Genseric had accepted with pleasure the invitation, and landed in Italy with an army of Vandals and Moors. Maximus, who had usurped the empire, fled; and Genseric entering Rome without opposition, delivered it up to his soldiers, who pillaged it for fourteen days, and then set fire to it. Genseric left the place loaded with riches, and at his return into ́ Africa, seized upon the whole remains of the Roman dominions there.

Odoacer, king of the Heruli, a people of that part of Germany now called Mecklenburgh, invaded Italy in the year 476 with a powerful army. He defeated the Roman troops under the command of Orestes, took the city of Pavia by force, and exposed it to the pillage of his soldiers, who destroyed all with fire and sword. Here Odoacer was saluted king of Italy. He then advanced to Rome, where he deposed the emperor Augustulus, and thus effectually established his own regal title.

In Augustulus ceased the Roman empire in the west.

The imperial title was now lost, the authority of Rome was extinguished, its dignity trampled under foot, and its extensive domain torn to pieces, and parcelled out among a set of barbarous people. Spain was divided among the Goths, Alans, Suevi, and others. Africa was possessed by the Vandals. Britain, having been before abandoned by the Romans, was subdued by the Saxons, who had lately assisted the Britons against their enemies, the Scots and the Picts. The Goths, Burgundions, and Francs, had erected their several kingdoms in Gaul; and now at last Rome itself, with Italy, the fountains of waters, that had triumphed over the rest of the world, became enslaved to a barbarous king. In these latter times Italy, by the ravages of the invaders, had been depopulated, and the imperial armies had consisted chiefly of barbarians, as Goths, Huns, Alans, Heruli, Suevi, and others, hired under the name of auxiliaries. These soon saw their own strength, and the weakness of their masters. They therefore shared out to themselves such morsels of the empire as they most relished.

Theodoric, king of those Goths that were settled in Italy, got Odoacer treacherously murdered in 493, and himself proclaimed king of all Italy. This country from that time remained under the power of the Goths, till Justinian the Great, emperor of Constantinople, sent thither his general Belisarius, who subdued a considerable part of it, reduced the Gothic power to a low ebb, and united Rome to the eastern empire. Thus was that unhappy city tossed from hand to hand, and now become a member of that empire, of which she had formerly been the head. However, Totila being chosen king of the Goths in Italy, found means to retrieve the declining state of their affairs. He recovered a great part of the country, and in 546 invested Rome, which he blocked up so closely, that it could receive no provisions. This occasioned such a raging famine, that the inhabitants were reduced to the utmost extremity of distress, feeding upon the most filthy things, even their own excrements. Belisarius attempted to send in provisions, but the attempt proved unsuccessful. The arm of God

was still lifted up against Rome, and was to strike another blow, before the divine justice could be finally satisfied. By a piece of treachery in the sentinels posted at one of the gates, Totila was admitted in the night into the city, which he gave up to the pillage of his soldiers. The Goths spent several days in plundering the inhabitants; and the senators and richest people were even stript of every thing, that they were necessitated to beg their bread of the very Goths who had thus reduced them. The walls of Rome were thrown down, the public monuments demolished, the city was burnt, and Totila carried away with him all the inhabitants; so that the place remained desert for above forty days. Procop. lib. 3. c. 12. lib. 4. c. 13. and Evagr. lib. 2. c. 7. Thus was completed the destruction of ancient Rome.

CHAPTER VI.

A further account of the Third Age.

HAVING in the preceding chapter elucidated by plain history, the brief enigmatical description of the fall of the Roman empire, which St. John gives us in the third seal, trumpet, and vial: we are now better prepared to understand the other, more explicit account, he has added in the 17th and 18th chapters of the Apocalypse. The event is so interesting to the Christian Church, that he enlarges on the circumstances of it, particularly on the ruin of Rome herself, as she had been the greatest enemy of Christ upon earth, the instrument of Satan in opposing the worship of God, and, in fine, the centre of idolatry. Thus speaks our prophet:

APOC. Chap. XVII. v. 1. And there came one of the seven Angels, who had the seven Vials, and spoke with me, saying, Come, I will show thee the condemnation of the great harlot, who sitteth upon many waters.

V. 2. With whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication: and they who inhabit the earth, have been made drunk with the wine of her whoredom.

V. 3. And he took me away in spirit into the desert. And I saw a woman sitting upon a scarlet coloured beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten

horns.

V. 4. And the woman was clothed round about with purple and scarlet, and gilt with gold, and precious stones, and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand, full of the abomination and filthiness of her fornication.

V. 5. And on her forehead a name was written; a mystery: Babylon the great, the mother of the fornications, and the abomination of the earth.

V. 6. And I saw the woman drunk with the blood of the Saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus. And

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