on the earth in the sight of men, and deceiveth them that dwell on the earth by the means of those miracles which he had power to do in the sight of the beast.”
In these four respects, then, not to look for others, will the last persecution be more awful than any of the earlier ones: in its being in itself fiercer and more horrible; in its being attended by a cessation of the ordinances of grace, “the Daily Sacrifice;” and by an open and blasphemous establishment of infidelity, or some such enormity, in the holiest recesses of the Church; lastly, in being supported by a power of working miracles. Well is it for Christians that the days are shortened! shortened for the elect’s sake, lest they should be overwhelmed, shortened, as it would seem, to three years and a half.
Much might be said, of course, on each of these four particulars; but I will confine myself to making one remark on the first of them, the sharpness of the persecution. It is to be worse than any persecution before it. Now, to understand the force of this announcement, we should understand in some degree what those former persecutions were.
This it is very difficult to do in a few words; yet a very slight survey of the history of the Church will convince us that cruelties more shocking than those which the early Christians suffered from their persecutors, are beyond our conception beforehand. St. Paul’s words, speaking of the persecutions prior to his time, but faintly describe the trial which came upon the Church in his day and afterwards. He says of the Jewish saints, “They were tortured, not accepting deliverance” ...... they “had trials of cruel mockings and scourgings, yea moreover of bonds and imprisonment: they were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with the sword: they wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, tormented.” Such were the trials of the Prophets under the Law, who in a measure anticipated the Gospel, as in doctrine, so in suffering; yet the suffering, when the Gospel came, was as much sharper, as the doctrine was clearer, than their foretaste of either.
