There have been four general churches upon this earth since the creation of the world; namely, the first or Most Ancient Church, called also the Adamic Church, the rise, progress, and end of which are described in the first seven chapters of Genesis;—the second or Ancient Church, called also the Noahtic Church, commencing with Noah and his sons after the flood;—the third or Jewish and Israelitish Church, which was rather the representative of a future Christian Church, than a real church of itself, and a kind of continuation of the Ancient Church;—and the fourth or Christian Church, which was founded by the Lord when on earth, but has, like all the rest, degenerated, and at length expired.
These four general churches were represented by the statue, which was seen by Nebuchadnezzar in a dream, whose head was of gold, his breast and arms of silver, his belly and thighs of brass, and his legs and feet of iron mixed with clay; see Dan. ii. 31 to S5. They were again represented by the four beasts rising up out of the sea, Dan. vii. 3 to 8. The same were also alluded to by the ancients, when they spake of the four ages of the world, and compared them, in reference to their different qualities, to the four chief metals, calling the first the golden age, the second the silver age, the third the copper age, and the fourth the iron age. But the wisdom of the ancients appears to have been incompetent to the anticipation or prediction of a fifth age, which should succeed the four former, and comprise in it's character all the valuable properties of the iron, the copper, the silver, and the gold. This could only be made known by that divine wisdom, which embraces at one view all future states of human society, which dictated, chiefly for the use of that fifth age, the Sacred Scriptures, and which has plainly revealed therein, that on the
