Second advent library

»'1crrars'r's smcoxn colrss. INfects; and we cannot but see that the whole of thisprophecy has been literally ihltilled.In the beginning of the sixth century, about A. D. 538,Justinian, emperor of Constantinople,in his controvewith the Arians, and other schismatics in the Greig;church, constituted the bishop of Rome head over allothers, both in the western and eastem churches, who,by his authority, suppressed the readihg of the Bible bylaymen, pretending tha.t they could not read and understandwithout the assistance of the clergy. About thistime, too, the Latin language ceased to be s ken inItaly, and the Greek and Latin both became dgad languages.The Bible at that time not being written ortranslated into any other languages in Europe, it becameaneasy task for the bishop to obscure the doctrine anddiscipline ot' the word of God, so far as suited his convenience,and to obtain universal power over the mindsand comciences of men, and clothe the Scriptures insackcloth. It; then, the Scriptures were iirst clothed insackcloth in A. D. 538, and were to prophesy 1260 yearsrn this situation, their prophecy would end in 1798.About the close of the eighteenth century, in consepzrenceof the abominable corruptions of the church ofomebeing exposed to public view, the men of theworld began to treat revelation as a fiction, and religionllpriestcmtt; and instead of searching forthe pillarand ground ot' the truth, "their imaginations becamevain, and their foolish minds were darkened." Theydeclared waragainst the Bible, the "two witnesses,"which war became general all over Europe and America.Some of the most eminent and principal writers in thiscontroversy were in France, the principal kingdomsmog? the ten, into which Rome had been divided att:hs= ose ofthe fifth century; and so successful werethese writers, that almost the whole nation of the Frenchbecame Deists, or Atheists, in a short time. This na»tion Hd long been guilty of the abominations of thebeast, the sins of Sodom and Egypt, andthe persecution of those who protested against her na~tional corruptions: the slaying of the witnesses; theirlymginadeadstatstbree years andahalfintha street