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Previous to the days of the apostle, the length of the year was estimated and fixed, in the time of Julius Cæsar, at 365 days-every fourth being leap year. The minute fraction by which this exceeded the true year, occasioned an error, which was first rectified by the council of Nice, A D. 325; and afterwards in the sixteenth century, as is still denoted by the difference between old and new style.

"In

order to avoid any future deviation of the civil from the solar year, it was determined, that instead of every hundredth or centurial year being a leap year, every four hundredth year only should be a leap year."* A day is thus suppressed in every three centuries out of four. And according to this exact computation, counting "each day for a year," a year denotes 365 years and (being three days less than one-fourth part of a year) eighty-eight days.

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The prophetic period of preparation may be thus estimated at three hundred and ninety-six years and one hundred and three days.

The purpose of such a long-continued preparation was to slay the third part of men. The same term, the third part, which occurs in each of the first four trumpets, is here again repeated. Before any of the seven angels prepared themselves to sound, an angel took a censer, and filled it with the fire of the altar, and cast it upon the earth. From the effect of the sounding of the first angel, the third part of trees was burnt up. On the sounding of the second, the third

* Brewster's Encyclopædia, vol. vi. p. 406.

part of the sea became blood, and the third part of the creatures which were in the sea died, and the third part of the ships were destroyed. Under the third trumpet, the star fell upon the third part of the rivers and upon the fountains of waters, and the third part of the waters became wormwood, &c. And when the fourth angel sounded, the third part of the sun was smitten, and the third part of the moon, and the third part of the stars, so that the third part of them was darkened, and the day shone not for a third part of it, and the night likewise. In each of these instances, as we have previously seen, the Roman empire was partially destroyed; and under the fourth trumpet the western empire was extinguished. Terrible, but partial, destructions, complete as to the part affected, and reaching unto Rome, gradually broke down the power of that city till it ceased to reign, in the imperial form, over any part of the earth. The emperor of Rome, as reigning in that city, was taken out of the way. But the sun was not wholly smitten. The rays of royalty still shone on the towers of Constantinople; and the eastern empire shared not the fate of the western. Rome fell; but Constantinople stood. And though part after part had been destroyed, the Roman empire was not yet at an end; and other powers than that of Goths, Huns, Vandals, and Lombards, had to rise in later ages for its destruction, till Constantinople should yield to the sway of other lords than that of the successors of the Cæsars, and another, and a last, part of the ancient Roman empire be utterly destroyed.

Though introduced under every previous trumpet, and though repeated five times in the sounding of the fourth, yet, long and minute as it is, more than all that preceded it, the term third part does not once occur in the delineation of the first woe, or fifth trumpet, descriptive of the Saracens. Into their

hands, notwithstanding that they pushed at both, neither Rome nor Constantinople ever fell. The Saracens were commissioned to hurt; but they could not kill. Constantinople survived, and the Roman empire lived. There was life in a part, and that life they could not touch. Yet the term, of such ominous import to the existence of the imperial power, is explicitly introduced anew in the description of the second woe-trumpet, or of the Turkish monarchy. The eastern empire, long after the extinction of the western, survived the irruptions of the Saracens ; but, after a long period of preparation, it was wholly overthrown and utterly subverted by the Turks, as other barbarians had previously, but each of them partially, subverted the empire of the west. The last portion of imperial power, pertaining strictly to the old Roman empire, was utterly destroyed by the Turks. The second was the completion of the work which had vainly been attempted under the first woe. The Turks at last struck at the heart of the empire, and pierced it. They killed where the Saracens could only hurt. Symbols had previously denoted the partial destruction of the Roman empire; but, under the second woe, prepared for that purpose, and loosed for that end, the third part of men were to be killed. The existence of the ancient Roman empire ceased ; and the expression significative of its partial, and at last of its final fall, as it is not to be found once in the Revelation, previous to the description of the beginning of the downfall of Rome, so it is only once to be found again in any other vision of the Apocalypse (referring also to Rome,) after being twice introduced in the delineation of the second woe, or of the kingdom of the Turks, which finally supplanted the empire of the Romans.

Looking naturally, or in a historical view, to the origin, and taking from that period a human prospec

tive view of their then probable fate, we see how-instead of a preparation, bordering on four centuries, for taking Constantinople, and subverting the last remains of the Roman empire-that the short period of twenty years alone intervened from the first Turkish invasion of it, when they came like a whirlwind, until the emperor was a prisoner in their hands, and the ransom of a million, with an annual tribute of three hundred and sixty thousand pieces of gold, was dictated by the "royal shepherd" of the north, and ratified by the emperor, as the terms of liberty and of peace. But we see, again, how the Greeks of the Lower Empire disowned the treaty and dishonoured their prince. And the time was not yet when the existence and independence of the empire was to be compromised by an actual submission to such humiliating terms. Before the close of the same century, we see Malek Shah, the monarch of Asia, whose will was the law, or else to whom tribute was paid, from the confines of China to the neighbourhood of Constantinople, as he long maintained an undisputed dominion; but the conquest of Turkestan finally occupied his arms, and, like his father, he left unavenged the breach of treaty by the Romans. Even on the subdivision of his mighty empire into four sultanies, we behold how "the valiant Soliman" pursued his conquests, from the Euphrates to the Bosphorus, till Alexius, the emperor, "trembled behind the walls of his capital," when he saw before them the two hundred ships with which the hordes of Asia could with all facility pass over in succession to the shores of Europe, and to the gates of Constantinople. That city seemed to be already in his grasp. But Antioch disowned the authority of Soliman, and the course of the whirlwind was turned towards Syria. He entered Judea; and the crusades began. All the Turkish sultanies were then bound, and the taking of Con

stantinople seemed a dream that was past, and an object that the sons of Seljuk could never realize. That which before seemed but the work of a day, was for two centuries an impossibility not to be thought of. But, after the expiry of that period, all the bands on the Turks were almost simultaneously broken, and the race of Othman arose, to retrace the steps of the Seljukian monarchs, but not to stop till they should reach the goal. Yet all human calculation of probabilities was set at nought again. The shores of the Bosphorus and Hellespont alone stayed the sons of Othman. In the year 1353 the Turks were established in Europe. Adrianople became the seat of the government of Amurath I., and his dominion reached to "the verge of the capital." But still a century elapsed before the fall of Constantinople. To take that city passed the power of Bajazet, who held as his own all the countries from the Euphrates to the Danube, and who threatened, after no enemy opposed him in the field, to feed his horse on the altar of St. Peter at Rome.

"The Roman world was now contracted to a corner of Thrace, between the Propontis and the Black Sea, about fifty miles in length and thirty in breadth; a space of ground not more extensive than the lesser principalities of Germany or Italy, if the remains of Constantinople had not still represented the wealth and populousness of a kingdom.* The epistle of Bajazet to the emperor was conceived in these words:-By the divine clemency our invincible scimitar" (great sword given to take peace from the earth) “has reduced to our obedience almost all Asia, with many and large countries in Europe," (they had entered many countries, and overflowed and passed over,) "EXCEPTING ONLY THE CITY OF CONSTANTINOPLE: for beyond the walls thou hast nothing left. Resign that city; stipulate thy reward; or tremble for thyself and thy unhappy people."+

The knights of Christendom, whose orders, of

*Gibbon, vol. xi. p. 457, chap. 64.

+ Ibid. p. 458.

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