countrymen. If their concealment precluded their existence as a separate party, church, or corporate body, framed after the few, but pure institutions of the New Testament, we can nevertheless prove, that such an institution once existed, by tracing the Western and Eastern Churches through their dark to their lighter shades of error, as we go back to their origin, until we arrive at the times of the Apostles. And this has been repeatedly done. Eminently good men, it has been acknowledged, were raised up in the Church, every now and then, even in the darkest ages, whose purity of conduct and scriptural doctrines were the admiration or the dislike of their contemporaries; but as they were generally without influence, the priesthood, either secretly destroyed them, or made them public examples to deter others from treading in their steps. "The way of truth was evil spoken of."

But as knowledge ex

tended itself, the true character of these

a 2 Pet. ii. 2.

people and their doctrines were better understood; and those of the dominant Church appeared scandalous and intolerable. Men saw the necessity of a change, but knew not how to effect it. Here was the dawn of the Reformation. God interposed by the copious effusion of his Holy Spirit.

CHAPTER X.

The Angel, or the Reformation.-Explained the Bible.A great movement. Its difficulties.

Opposed by

The

Rome. Protected by the civil power.- Seventh trumpet the great solution of Divine Providence. Bible translated. — Generally read. — Missionary efforts made.

Verses 1-4. " AND I saw another mighty angel come down from heaven, clothed with a cloud; and a rainbow was upon his head, and his face was as it were the sun, and his feet as pillars of fire: and he had in his hand a little book open: and he set his right foot upon the sea, and his left foot upon the earth, and cried with a loud voice, as when a lion roareth; and when he had cried, seven thunders uttered their voices. And when the seven thunders had uttered their voices, I was about to write: and I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me, Seal up those things which the seven thunders uttered, and write them not."

This angel denotes perhaps the Reformation, the next great event in Europe after the fall of Constantinople, and which brought into notice, or drew from obscurity, the hundred and forty-four thousand of the sixth seal, or those of them who were perpetuated down to that date and lived in Europe. He is termed a mighty angel, roaring like a lion, a description that does not exaggerate the character and energy of the movement, commenced by Luther and Zwingle, and carried over the Continent, and into Britain. They opened the Bible to the people, which had hitherto for many ages been a closed, as wellas a sealed, book. The perspicuity, power, and conviction, with which the reformers unfolded its doctrines, and the purity, zeal, and disinterestedness of their lives, are denoted by the brightness of the countenance and of the feet of the angel. He is clothed with a cloud, for the reformers were protected by divine power, and sanctified by the Saviour's

Exod. xvi. 10.; Ps. xcvii. 2.; Isaiah, xix. 1.

grace. The rainbow is the symbol of God's covenant with his Church; and the Reformation was a singular confirmation of Christ's promise to be with it to the end of the world; for Luther, though bigoted in his attachment to the worst errors of the Roman hierarchy, was chiefly convinced that it bore all the marks of the great apostasy by the simple perusal of Holy Scripture; and thousands arrived at the same conviction by the ministry and writings of the reformers. The angel stood on the land and sea. The Reformation was cradled in a sea of troubles: it toiled long for existence; and from the vacillation of its political friends, and the frequent misunderstanding of the reformers. among themselves, gave its enemies hope of its suppression. But the peculiar providence of God, and the extraordinary grace of its true members, who were for the most part composed of the middle and the lower classes, were the firm ground or earth that defied