tion the human intellect has risen to the level, and expanded to the dimensions of a Bacon, a Milton, a Newton, a Locke, a Leibnitz, and a Laplace, it has done so in despite of popery, which has beheld with sullen ferocity the limits of her dark domain slowly recede before Luther and the art of printing-Phœbus and his quiver. Accordingly, every scientific and literary production which has, since the invention. of that glorious art,* most largely contributed to exalt the dignity of man, by extending the boundaries of his knowledge and purifying his moral sense, is honoured with a place in the Roman index expurgatorius, or catalogue of books, which the votaries of popery are forbidden to read, and condemned to destroy. Even so lately as the seventeenth century, Galileo was taught, in the scholastic dungeons of the Inquisition, that no science, capable of expanding

consisted of legendary trash concerning the conflicts of monks and devils. Not even his franciscan cowl could save Roger Bacon from a ten years' imprisonment, with which his clerical brethren of Oxford, in the thirteenth century, punished his amazing acquirements in mathematics and chymistry:-such crimes would have brought a layman to the stake. Wickliffe was excommunicated, but had died before his bones were burned. His illustrious followers, Jerome of Prague and John Huss, were not so fortunate.

*Flight alone saved Faust, in the fifteenth century, from a cruel death for having introduced the blessings of that invention into the city of Paris. His guilt, it is true, was of an aggravated nature. Instead of employing his press for the diffusion of legendary demonstrations, that the power of devils is so exceedingly terrible as to be defeated only by the sanctity of monks, the host, holy water, or the image or relic of a popish saint, Faüst devoted his art to the multiplication of copies of the holy scrip

tures.

the mind and invigorating the reasoning faculties, can be so abstracted from the ordinary business of human life as to elude the instinctive hostility of a power, conscious that all truths, physical and metaphysical, religious and moral, are connected in harmonious affiliation by the relation, either of legitimate deduction, or of reciprocally illustrative analogy, and that, consequently, every truth is its enemy. The annual and diurnal volutions of the earth were solemnly anathematised by the supreme head of the papal church, and had the nutation of the poles, with the consequent precession of the equinoxes, been then known, his infallible holiness would undoubtedly have damned them also.

But though all diffusion of knowledge was odious to popery, it was not equally so. Religious truth, being immediately directed against the very foundation of her supremacy, was the peculiar object of her rancorous persecution. The papal empire approached much more nearly, than its pagan predecessor ever did, to the extinction of christianity. If the gates of hell could prevail against the church of God it would assuredly have been smothered by popery. But it was otherwise ordained. A monster, (to borrow a figure from Chinese astronomy) was devouring the orb of light, but, though the eclipse was nearly total, the luminary was never extinguished. Through the blackest midnight of popery, and in the very heart of her dominion, the light of christianity-a light shining in a dark place-still glimmered, like a sepulchral lamp. In the most dismal desolation of

his church God was never without witnesses who recorded their testimony against its corruptions, and denounced the iniquities of the Man of sin.

Bishop Newton's Twenty-fourth Dissertation on the Prophecies narrates the successive struggles of several states, churches, and individuals, from the eighth to the fifteenth century, against the progressive corruption and overwhelming tyranny of the church of Rome;-the reader is referred to it for information indispensably requisite for a full understanding of the present subject.

The principal characteristics of the popedom are thus exhibited

5. "And when he had opened the third seal, I heard the third animal say, Come and see. And I beheld, and lo a black horse; and he that sat on him had a pair of balances in his hand.

6. "And I heard a voice in the midst of the four animals say, A measure of wheat for a penny; and three measures of barley for a penny; and see thou hurt not the oil and the wine."

1

The word Zuyos, jugum, which the authorised version has translated a pair of balances, is found frequently, both in the Septuagint and in the new testament, and invariably signifies, whenever it occurs, in the whole range of Greek literature, sacred and profane-a yoke. St. Jerome, imagining that the word might, in the passage under consideration, signify some instrument for measuring the wheat and the barley, has rendered it—statera, a balance-an error

which the english translators adopted, and have dilated into a pair of balances.*

A yoke is an instrument for the necks of beasts of burden, whereby they are fastened to their loads, and by a metaphor, common to all languages, signifies a coercive government-hence, from the latin words

The authors of the english bible appear, from their reckless adoption of all the many errors of the latin version of the Apocalypse, to have been either diffident of their knowledge of the greek language, or not aware that in the whole circle of literature no translator is less entitled to implicit confidence than St. Jerome; of whom that eminently learned and sagacious critic, Joseph Scaliger, in his Prolegomena, says, "plurima in vertendo mutat, infulcit, prœerit”—“ in translating he alters, interpolates, and omits very many words"-a compendious summary of every vice that can damn the authority of a translator.

-I wish, however, not to be understood as charging the english translators with having plagiarised from the vulgate all the errors of their version: they have added to it so many indisputable originals of their own, as to render their production well worthy of the following description of it by the Reverend Doctor Hales, in his preface to the second volume of his learned “Analysis of sacred chronology.”

"It is not sufficiently close and uniform in rendering the originals, and though a good popular translation, in the main, and of admirable plainness and simplicity of style, yet it is not calculated to convey precise and critical information, in difficult and mysterious passages, in the prophecies especially, and poetical parts of scripture, abounding in abrupt transitions and perplexing involutions: even in the gospels, those perfect models of historical narration, mistranslations abound, originating from ignorance of, or inattention to, the peculiar force of the greek article ; as fully proved in Dr. Middleton's excellent Treatise on the Greek Article."—I take leave to add that the mistranslations in the latin, and in the english, versions of the Apocalypse, are not limited to the influence of the greek article, absent or present.

sub, under, and jugum, a yoke, come the english words, subjugate, subjugation.

The yoke, in the hand of the rider on the black horse, represents, not only the tyranny with which popery oppresses the human mind by forbidding, under the severest penalties, all exercise of human reason concerning any of her monstrous tenets, but also the burdensome ordinances and rites with which she worries her votaries- -celibacy, penances, fasts, pilgrimages, auricular confession to her priests, &c.

-in all which particulars she stands in direct opposition to the religion of the blessed one who has said (St. Matt. xi. 29, 30.) "Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me, for I am meek and lowly in heart and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light."

The word, which in these verses is properly translated into yoke, is the same that has been so strangely perverted into a pair of balances.

The white colour of the horse pertaining to the first seal, having been explained to signify the light and purity of the christian church, the signification of the papal black horse is sufficiently manifest.

6

The word translated a measure,' is a chanix, an attic measure, containing about the sixth part of a gallon-the word translated 'a penny,' is a denarius, a roman silver coin, equivalent to about sevenpence halfpenny of British money.- A choenix of wheat for a denarius, the ordinary price of about three gallons, implies a great scarcity, and what we should call a famine price. Three choenixes of barley for a